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Notebandi: Nobel Laureate Economist Asks US To Follow Suit
Joseph Stiglitz
A Nobel Prize-winning economist has urged the US to get rid of cash and change over to a digital economy.
On 8 November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced demonetisation of 86 per cent of India’s currency in one go. Columbia University professor, Joseph Stiglitz, recommended to the US to follow suit to rein in tax evasion and corruption through demonetisation.
Eliminating currency in the long run has “benefits that outweigh the cost”, he said at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos.
Saying that US is one of the countries that has done little to fight corruption, he suggested the remedy would be to go cashless and embrace digital currencies.
Stiglitz’s ideas for a “less-cash” society have been echoed by Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff, who argued for two decades that a society awash with cash contributes to the growth of the underground economy. Rogoff believes large-denomination bank notes, rarely used by ordinary people and businesses, should be phased out.
“Cash facilitates crime because it is anonymous, and big bills are especially problematic because they are so easy to carry and conceal,” he says.
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